The Orc Shaman
Would it actually help me to put Ogawa in the guild master's seat of the Minamoto Guild?
Jin-soo turned the question over for a moment. In terms of raw force, there was little to gain. Information, however, was another matter entirely.
Mistaking the Bone Dragon for an Out-of-Spec Monster had been a misunderstanding. Even so, it was true that the great guilds possessed the intelligence to notice an anomaly the instant it appeared, whether in the Starting City or anywhere else. And to Jin-soo, information mattered more than anything.
I'll intervene.
It was hardly a difficult thing. Ogawa only needed to hold the guild master's seat until Jin-soo left Tower Floor 150.
A little effort, in exchange for gathering intelligence on Tower Floor 150 as I please. That's a substantial gain.
He didn't even need to move himself.
I only have to attach summons to him.
Jin-soo considered which ones to send. Shadow Summons were bound by distance. Army Summons were not.
Even so, I can't just send Army Summons without a thought.
Shadow Summons could sink into shadow and move unseen. Army Summons stood out at a glance, and they had no stealth with which to hide.
Still, it's a relief their levels have climbed so high.
Grown to level 922, the Shadow Summons could now separate from Jin-soo by as much as a hundred kilometers.
That ought to be enough.
On Floor 100, it would have been impossible. On Tower Floor 150, it was not.
Because Tower Floor 150 is smaller than Floor 100.
If Floor 100 spanned the territory of an entire nation, Tower Floor 150 was no larger than a capital. The reason the floor had shrunk even as the Tower climbed higher was simple.
Because that many Players died.
Floor 100 was a gathering place, where survivors from countless lower floors converged into one. Floor 150 was different. With no influx of survivors from other lower floors, everyone who had lived through Floor 100 and cleared Tower Floor 149 assembled on Tower Floor 150. No one was added along the way. The numbers only dwindled. Of course Tower Floor 150 had to be smaller than Floor 100.
The Shadow Knight, the Shadow Warrior, the Shadow Assassin, and the Shadow Archer. Sending just those four should be plenty.
The Shadow Mage and the Shadow Healer could simply keep hunting alongside the other summons.
For communication, the communication stone I took when I raided the Minamoto Guild's guild house in the Starting City will do.
Jin-soo pressed the stone into the Shadow Assassin's hand and sent it to the Final City, where he expected Ogawa to be.
It knows Ogawa's face. That shouldn't be a problem.
For a Shadow Assassin whose stealth was exceptional, meeting Ogawa in secret would hardly be difficult.
A great fortune has come my way.
Ogawa, who had brushed death twice in recent days, had just been handed the opportunity of a lifetime.
To think I can actually aim for the guild master's seat.
He had confidence in his own skill. Even so, among those who had entered Tower Floor 150 around the same time, there were simply too many outstanding talents, and Ogawa had always lived pressed beneath them. This was something he had never dared imagine, not even in dreams.
All I have to do is bring that bastard Fujiwara to heel.
Fujiwara, who had reached Tower Floor 150 a full year after Ogawa, was both heir to the former guild master, Okamoto, and the guild master to come. Okamoto himself had been a man of strong command and easy rapport, and even in combat as a Player he had never once fallen short of Ogawa.
He should just step aside. Why is he being so greedy?
The guild master's seat of the Minamoto Guild on Tower Floor 150 was already reserved for Fujiwara. Even if Ogawa took it, the time limit would force him up to Floor 151 in half a year, whether he liked it or not.
I'm only asking to milk it for half a year, and he opposes even that.
Ogawa cursed Fujiwara. And yet, the moment he saw the guild master's seat standing empty, he himself had begun coveting a six-month term. He was no different.
Meanwhile he's got plenty of time left to feast on it himself.
Ogawa ground his teeth.
Sit in the Minamoto Guild master's seat, and the official share alone was considerable. Under one pretext or another, there were unofficial scraps to pocket as well. More than that, a guild master embezzling guild funds within reasonable bounds was something of a custom.
In the Tower, no one knew when or how they might die. The strength of an organization mattered, but what mattered most was the power one held as a Player. Ogawa could not help but covet it.
If I can just climb into that seat...
As a Player, he could grow vastly stronger than he was now.
A pitch-black silhouette bled into being before his eyes.
Then it hurled something straight at him.
"Eek!"
Ogawa startled, hauled up his mana, and yanked his sword free.
Fujiwara, you coward. Sending an assassin.
He failed to cut down whatever had been thrown. The thing struck his head with a blunt crack and dropped to the floor.
What?
He had taken it for a hidden blade, and the instant he failed to block it he had thought himself dead. It was no throwing weapon. Something blunt had met his skull and raised a small lump, and that was all.
"A communication stone?"
Having identified what the unknown opponent had thrown, Ogawa stared in puzzlement.
That's not a person.
The other was no human. It was a summon.
Who in the world sent it?
Then the summoner who had vanished with the former guild master rose in his mind.
Did that person send this?
Ogawa swallowed dryly, picked up the communication stone, and poured mana into it.
"Ogawa?"
The question reached him the instant the link formed.
"Yes."
He answered politely, for the moment. And yet the voice was not unfamiliar. He knew it.
"Looks like it got through without any real trouble. I sent four summons. They'll follow your orders, so put them to use and see about becoming guild master."
"Might you be the summoner who kept a Bone Dragon?"
Ogawa asked carefully.
"Yeah. That's me."
"Then why would you show me this kind of favor?"
Doubt filled his face. The summoner who commanded the Bone Dragon and the Minamoto Guild were enemies. Why send summons in secret to help him?
"What. You don't know who I am?"
"I do, but..."
"Idiot. Can't even recognize your own master."
"Master? What do you mean by th—"
Startled by the claim, Ogawa's question died halfway out of his mouth.
"D-don't tell me?"
Into his mind came the Player who had become his master in exchange for sparing his life, back when he had moved with the Sasaki subjugation force.
Those two were the same person?
Ogawa reeled at the revelation.
Come to think of it, of course it makes more sense for there to be one transcendent powerhouse than two.
And both of them were Korean.
Why didn't I connect them?
Having found the common thread, Ogawa tore at his hair over his own stupidity.
"What, I went out of my way to spare your life back then, and you still hadn't figured even that out?"
The memory rose of the Bone Dragon's flash breath missing him by a hair.
It wasn't luck.
At the time he had thought himself fortunate. He had been wrong.
"I am truly sorry. I was too dull to realize it. I will never make such a mistake again."
"At least you know your place. That's something. Contact me once you've become guild master."
"Understood."
The word had barely left him before the communication stone went dark. The other side had severed the link.
Ogawa swallowed, hard.
He felt as though he had signed a contract with a devil.
If I rise to guild master of the Minamoto Guild with his help...
Unreasonable demands would surely follow. And he, already a slave, would never be able to refuse them.
The guild master of the Minamoto Guild, the face of Japan, a slave to a Korean.
How absurd was that?
The guild's coffers being stripped bare would be the least of it. Guild members might even lose their lives trying to carry out outrageous orders. In the worst case, the Minamoto Guild's line on Tower Floor 150 might be severed entirely.
This was a kind of treason. A betrayal of the Minamoto Guild.
For the guild's future, and out of patriotism, he absolutely should not take that seat.
Patriotism, my ass. Where does something like that even exist?
This was not Earth. The Minamoto Guild was no nation, only a private organization built around the Japanese.
In the Tower, personal survival comes first. I have to live, before anything else.
Ogawa held no great attachment to the Minamoto Guild. He had joined only to raise his odds of survival and to take more for himself. Had he ever been truly loyal, he would never have begged Jin-soo for his life in the first place.
My first priority is to follow Master's orders faithfully. First, I'll take the guild master's seat with the help of the summons he sent.
Ogawa switched sides without a moment's hesitation.
It didn't matter if the Minamoto Guild suffered enormous damage because he rose to guild master.
For me, Master can be a stronger backing than the Minamoto Guild.
To Ogawa, his own survival, wealth, and glory mattered more than the guild's well-being.
Jin-soo and Shin Sua worked the hunting grounds without missing a day, gathering achievements and raising their levels. If they had a secondary goal amid all of it, it was finding powerful monsters.
Why is it so hard to find a boss monster worth using?
Ordinary boss monsters simply didn't satisfy him.
I need to fill the Army Summons with ones actually worth keeping.
That was no easy thing.
Among his current Army Summons, the only ones still worth keeping were the Bone Dragon, the Demi-Lich, and the variant lycanthrope.
Truth be told, even the Demi-Lich and the variant lycanthrope feel a little borderline.
Among liches, the Demi-Lich was the lowest grade. But it carried a distinction: it had been born from a being that achieved the feat of being first, then perished. And since it had, in name at least, been the gatekeeper of Floor 100, he believed it would grow more useful as the level of Army Summon rose.
The variant lycanthrope, on the other hand, was already marked for replacement the moment he secured a stronger boss or variant. Its combat power far exceeded an ordinary lycanthrope's, but it was neither of high standing nor a being that had accumulated any special achievements. There was nothing to be done about that.
If only I could hunt the Out-of-Spec Monster of Tower Floor 150.
He could add another great feat, and it was a perfect chance to lay hands on a powerful summon.
The Out-of-Spec Monster of Tower Floor 150 was the Orc Shaman.
The Out-of-Spec Monsters of Floor 50 and Floor 100, the White Drake and the Bone Dragon, were single entities that nonetheless wielded tremendous combat power. The Orc Shaman of Tower Floor 150 was cut from different cloth.
Rather than raw power as a single being, it's a creature with a special skill for commanding a monster legion.
It could dominate not only orcs, but every monster that existed on Tower Floor 150.
It doesn't seem like it would be that troublesome. But I've never faced it myself, so I can't be sure.
Before his regression, Jin-soo had never met the Orc Shaman. He had only heard of it from Players on the upper floors who had encountered the Out-of-Spec Monster of each floor.
Was what that man said true?
One of the Players who had told the pre-regression Jin-soo about the Orc Shaman had said something astonishing.
Unlike the other Out-of-Spec Monsters, it doesn't suddenly reveal itself. He said it stays in an ordinary hunting ground, living among the other orcs.
That Player claimed he had stumbled by chance into the domain of the Out-of-Spec Orc Shaman.
He made an enormous fuss about setting out to hunt what he thought was an ordinary orc shaman, only to barely escape with his life.
The man was such a braggart that his words didn't carry much weight. Even so, however slim the chance, it was well worth testing.
It's not as if I stand to lose anything.
They were monsters he would be hunting anyway. All he had to do was increase the share of orcs among them. Success would be a windfall, and failure would cost him nothing, so trying was pure gain.
Well. So far, there had been no results at all.